I was a bit bored today so I decided to mod one of the Deck 82 boards I had sitting around to include a USB 2.0 mini hub. Many people have asked about this in the past and why we don't incorporate one ourselves. Hopefully this can show you how easy it really is to do.

Tools used:Dremel with cutoff wheelSide cuttersSoldering iron, solder sucker, and small amount of solder wick for the surface mount parts on the USB hubPatience

To start I picked up an el cheapo mini USB 2.0 hub (this one happened to be made by StarTech):

Here it is outside of the package:

At this point I snapped the plastic casing off to reveal the inner PCB. To my surprise this one was suited very well for modding into the Deck 82 - very low profile, very easy access to all the things I would later need to solder up (with some help from our tech Don S.):

Next it was time to decide where to put the hub inside the housing. I figured the best location for me was on the rear of the board opposite the side where the USB connector sat. This gave me the most room to mod the housing and to put the hub inside the assembly:

Once I knew where to put the hub I needed to mod the casing to expose the ports. After some measuring and marking with a pen, I used the Dremel with a cutoff wheel to take a rectangular chunk out of the plastic. You can do this alot of different ways and I am not sure the Dremel was the right tool for the job (it slightly melts the plastic that you are removing and takes some cleanup) but that is what I used and it worked fairly well:

Now to mod the USB hub. I decided to only expose 3 of the 4 ports and connect the Deck internally (and slightly more permanently) to the 4th port using the spare USB cable. First I started by desoldering the current cable and connector from the hub as well as the USB connector on the end nearest the LED. On my spare cable (I used a spare Deck 82 cable but you can use any cable with a type B connector) I chopped the end with the type B connector off about 8 inches from the end and soldered it directly to the place where the USB connector was removed from the hub board. I also should note that you can use the cable that comes with your Deck but it will shorten your cable down; I elected to use a second cable to maintain my cable length in the end. Next I cut off the type B connector on the cable that will be exposed from the Deck and soldered it to the hub board where the original cable was removed. I also soldered the cable shielding to one of the connectors as it would not fit into the hole in the circuit board and will provide better grounding. [EDIT: I later realized that I couldn't solder the shielding to the top of the connector as it interferes with how I wanted to mount the hub so I swapped it to the back of the connector, not shown in picture]:

Another wider view of the final cable/hub assembly:

Now to prepare the bottom pan for the mounting of the hub. Here is where I used the rubber tape, double sided tape, zip tie holders, and zip ties (originally planned on super glue but decided on the double stick tape in the end as it would be easier to remove if I decided to swap it out):

First I measured and marked off where the ports would come in contact with the bottom pan and taped off that section with the rubber tape to insulate the hub. I also placed the zip tie holders in convenient locations to hold the cabling securely in place:

After applying the double stick tape I placed the hub, circuit board side facing away, onto the bottom pan. Then I zip tied the cables down to the holders:

Another close-up shot of the hub on the bottom pan with the cables tied down:

Yet another shot from the view of the ports:

Now I don't have any shots of me trying to reconnect everything (dont forget to screw down the green grounding wire with the bottom pan!) here is the final result. I am happy with how it turned out but I wish I would have taken a bit more time to cut the hole in the casing as mine turned out a bit unprecise. The more time you take the better your results will be:

Also note that my cable now comes out the other side of the housing. You can run it out of the original location but it will shorten your cable:

Nice work That's got to be the smallest PCB I've ever seen for a USB 2.0 hub.

Does that setup work through a KVM? I've had lots of trouble getting my KVM to recognize the keyboard with an inline hub, but it may just be the particular KVM I used. For a direct connect to the PC I imagine that setup works great.

With my Iogear 4 port USB KVM it works (I am typing on it right now) and so does the USB hub. The only downside is that the hub in my Deck and KVM are limited to what they can power as both are self-powered hubs (i.e. the KVM can only power up to 500mA so the total of the 248mA for the Deck and anything you plug into the downstream hub built into my Deck cannot exceed this). It is good for plugging in a mouse, digital camera, or anything else with lower power requirements. You can always check what a device requires by going into the device manager under USB devices then open the properties for the hubs and click the power tab.

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I was a bit bored today so I decided to mod one of the Deck 82 boards I had sitting around to include a USB 2.0 mini hub. Many people have asked about this in the past and why we don't incorporate one ourselves. Hopefully this can show you how easy it really is to do.Esky Heli Tools